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Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment
- seibelj 7y agoIt’s quite clear that in 2019 it is not possible to get all powerful entities in the world to work together on an issue like climate change. We should focus on band-aid solutions like reflectors in space above the poles that prevent sun from hitting the earth at all. We are past the “if only everyone bought electric cars” phase of solutions and need special projects that assume the amount of CO2 emitted stays the same or increases.
- zatertip 7y agoThere's no stationary orbit over the poles
- jedberg 7y agoIf we’re living in “reflectors over the poles” fantasyland, I’m sure we can come up with a way to put continuously firing boosters on it to keep it over the pole.
- seibelj 7y agoI have no idea if that’s possible, what I mean is we should stop trying to get the US and China to agree on anything let alone climate change so we need grand silver bullet solutions.
- simias 7y agoChina does accept the reality of climate change and is enacting policies against it. It might not be nearly enough but it's not fair to lump them with the USA on this one.
- StaticRedux 7y ago80%+ of the plastic in the ocean comes from China. It's not fair to lump the US in with China. "They recognize it and want to do something" doesn't mean shit when you're by far the worst part of the problem. Especially when "wanting to do something about it" and "doing something about it" are ridiculously different things.
- briandear 7y agoHave you been to Beijing? China is in a class all of its own when it comes to pollution. It’s not fair to lump the US in with China.
- flukus 7y agoHave you bought products manufactured in China? That's your pollution.
- ben_w 7y agoAlso, the snow is pretty reflective. And silver-plating any exposed rock is cheaper than going to orbit, per kg of silver/kg-to-LEO.
- the8472 7y agowell, technically you need less silver in orbit since you can use extremely thin films which just wouldn't survive on the ground. but yeah, it's still a very impractical proposition.
- the8472 7y agothe latest climate-engineering proposals for sunshades involve placing a cloud of reflective or diffracting solar sails at L1, not in close earth orbit over any specific region.
- blarb_blarb 7y agoI don't see the word "orbit" used at all, except by you. Sounds like you'd imagine a permanent eclipsing body is something that would employ an orbital insertion into earth orbit, which is your own assumption.
- ianstallings 7y agoPlease explain how you put "reflectors in space" without putting them into orbit.
- Jun8 7y agoIt should not be an either-or proposition when the stakes are so high. We should work full time to have governments work on breaking climate change speed (reduce/limit emissions, alternative energy, carbon tax, etc.) while at the same time work on scientific methods to fight climate change, if possible (e.g. Prometeus, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842240.
- balozi 7y agoWe probably don't want all powerful entities in the world working together on anything anyway. Nothing good can come of that. A diverse range of localized solutions reacting to local experiences and problems is better than top-down central-planned solutions.
- swarnie_ 7y agoWhen is the next US election due? We might need a new administration to get moving on this one. You know... Before we're all fucked.
- war1025 7y agoThe cynic in me has wondered the past couple days whether all this new climate change coverage is a full-court press by Democrats in anticipation of the next election. Seems to have become a hot topic in the news just within the past few weeks.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoSee the article. Headline is for the extreme scenario, total clickbait. There is a massive problem in tying a real issue we don’t understand fully into being synonymous with a specific solution (tax policy) supported by a single political ideology. It’s a wedge issue being used as bulletproof points to get elected. The politicians who are flying private everywhere and supporting policies like preventing nuclear are not actually interested in solutions, just power.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoClimate change is constantly in the headlines because it’s constantly causing various newsworthy conditions and being actively studied. Some stories bubble up to the mainstream audience and some don’t, but that’s not much different with shootings or any other regularly occurring news event in the US. Attention on climate change has always ebbed and flowed.
- klyrs 7y agoScientists have been ringing the alarm since the 1970s. In the US and Canada, conservatives have gone to great lengths to censor this science and and the center-left has collaborated in the advancement of oil in spite of the increasingly overwhelming evidence that we're causing significant climate change. This study is just some climate scientists doing their jobs, and the publication date was Monday. Such things happen on a very regular basis. A new generation of progressive candidates are advancing concrete plans to tackle climate change, and candidates talking about their policy proposals should be expected ahead of an election. Is there a recent swell of coverage? Yes, that's normal. Is this article part of a "full court press?" Sounds to me like correlation but not causation. In fact, I'd say that the Democrats who care, care because they're familiar with the science: the causative relationship is quite the opposite of your cynicism.
- zuluwill 7y agopotentially very dumb question but could you build hydro power solutions(from the ice melt/run off) that you then get clean power from / help cool ice...? So out of my depth here but genuinely curious. Also appreciate building a hydro power plant on a very unstable platform (ice) is problematic just curious of other solutions to generate hydro power...
- b_tterc_p 7y agoNo, the scale of energy potentially captured would not come close to the amount of energy needed to cool tons of water below freezing.
- simonh 7y agoMost of these ice sheets are already quite close to sea level and distributed across vast areas - like most of the coastline of Antarctica. Hydro power works best with significant altitude drops across very narrow choke-points.
- LinuxBender 7y agoAre humans advanced enough to engineer around sea rise and temperature changes?
- b_tterc_p 7y agoThe first problem is what you do with the billion displaced people. That’s not a tech problem, so much as an ethical / pragmatic problem.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- maxxxxx 7y agoHumanity should be fine. The problem is how to deal with millions of displaced people. We will probably need a few wars to figure that one out.
- onemoresoop 7y agoHumanity may be fine but we're also disrupting other life on the planet that we can't predict the impact of. Humanity may not be so fine after all..
- ThomPete 7y agoYes already now, certainly in 2100.
- _jal 7y agoYes. But not while maintaining anything like current first-world culture. You either need to reduce energy consumption significantly or reduce population significantly. Two guesses how that plays out.
- ianstallings 7y agoWe do it currently. Holland is a good example of fighting back the sea, but at great expense. And not every country will be able to do this type of engineering. The temp rises are another thing that we can adapt to. Maybe even some global engineering to thwart it. But again it will be at great cost. And this will probably have the bigger impact on all of us. Our eco-system is very susceptible to small temp changes.
- Jigg 7y agoTo be clear, the 2m increase is the analyzed 95th percentile (very high end) of the estimates of this meta-study, when you take both glacial melt and glacial expansion. The median values for low and high estimates are 69cm and 110cm. Not that this isn't still terrifying, worth of action, worthy of international collaboration, and so on. Just let's be accurate about our titles.
- walkingolof 7y agoI'm lucky, I live in an area with high amount of post-glacial rebound (yea, thats a thing). The land here is on average rising with 1 cm per year out of the ocean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound
- mc32 7y agoDoesn’t Earth’s being a spinning oblong sphere mean some places will experience only minimal change while others will see significant change? So all this is “average” rise.
- parhamn 7y agoIt's a much more complicated process (e.g. the weight of the ice changes the shape of the mantle). The Verge did a good high level overview of some of the different factors in play here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5zh3yG_-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5zh3yG_-0
- foxyv 7y agoIf you are interested in seeing a map of sea level rises, the NOAA publishes a website with one. At 7 ft there are significant coastal differences. https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/ https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/
- lazyjones 7y agoHere's a more complete picture for the case when all ice melts and sea levels rise by 60+ meters: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/waterworld.html http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/waterworld.html (note: by a "skeptic") > Today the Earth has 148 million sq. km of land area, of which 16 million sq. km is covered by glaciers. A sea level rise of 66 meters would flood about 13 million sq. km of land outside Antarctica. Without polar ice, Antarctica and Greenland would be ice free, although about half of Antarctica would be under water. Thus, ice-free land would be 128 million sq. km compared to 132 million sq. km today. I can't check all the calculations, but this result doesn't seem too terrible since we'd likely be able to migrate affected people in time.
- beatpanda 7y agoThe amount of migration that has completely upended political systems in the United States and Europe since 2010 or so will be a historical footnote compared to the migration we will experience due to climate change. The United States elected a professional wrestling character to the Presidency because he promised to be cruel to immigrants. Forgive my pessimism but I do not think "we will be able to migrate affected people in time" barring a major transformation of our society.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago> United States elected a professional wrestling character to the Presidency because he promised to be cruel to immigrants Seriously, if that is what you honestly think happened without hyperbole... I worry for 2020.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lazyjones 7y agoSo how much was the actual global sea-level rise in the past 10 years and how does it relate to previous estimates?
- mythrwy 7y agoMaybe something like this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm I don't doubt humans are affecting the climate. I do doubt that humans can extrapolate the effects of what they are doing out into the future very well.
- cheerlessbog 7y agoThat article describes one scientist's hypothesis based on an extreme year - another more conservative scientist is quoted also. The thing to pay attention to is peer reviewed consensus, which is still alarming.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- simonh 7y agoCurrent estimates, before this finding, are that it's rising by about 3mm/year, up from an average of 1-2mm/year for the previous century. About 55% of that is estimated to be due to continental ice melt and 30% to thermal expansion of the oceans.
- lazyjones 7y ago> it's rising by about 3mm/year, up from an average of 1-2mm/year for the previous century That's a questionable comparison since we don't have reliable data from before 1993. If the actual sea level rise was 3mm/year recently, we should surely not expect it to rise 25mm/year on average for the next 80 years?
- simonh 7y ago
- evandijk70 7y agoEDIT: The title has been updated: it used to say: "Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise to exceed 2m by 2100" _________________________________________________________________ Incredibly misleading title. The expected ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise are, per the article: 26 cm (Assuming CO2 emissions from the Paris agreement) 51 cm (Assuming CO2 emissions in line with current emissions) 69 cm (Assuming CO2 emissions in line with current emissions and incorporation of thermal expansion) The 2m value comes from the large error bars in the predictions. Global climate change is a huge problem, but misrepresenting results from a scientific study like this is just presenting ammunition to climate change deniers on a silver platter. I suggest replacing 'to' with 'may' in the title, as that is a better summary of the article.
- briandear 7y agoIt’s definitely ammunition, deservedly so. This sort of misrepresentation is par for the course. “The world is ending in 12 years.” I seem to hear that every 12 years just when people have forgotten about how the world was supposed to have been flooded already. Activists seem to have a ha but if exagération, if not downright lying.
- coldpie 7y agoPlease read the IPCC reports, not ... whatever your current source is.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoI understand. That said, in retrospect, we seem to be well ahead of "X will happen by Year Y" predictions. I guess my point is, better safe than sorry. Because as it is, we're fast-tracking to worst case.
- ThomPete 7y agoCan you point to any scientifically demonstrated conclusion on how much humans affect climate via CO2 emissions? It's definitely some, but how much? You won't find the answer and that should make the most critical thinkers amongst you to question how much you actually can rely on much of these predictions about the future 30-80 years out. It seems like that would be a great place to start if you want to convince people that they should spend a lot of money on something that isn't even demonstrated to be a problem we can't handle already now. What are you ready to do, who's money and freedoms are you ready to spend on being "safe rather than sorry"? This is the real question we should be asking ourselves.
- ridicter 7y agoIf you're interested in getting involved in addressing climate change, here are two options for citizens to get involved: 1) The Citizens Climate Climate Lobby has been around ten years, and it currently has a bill in Congress that has bipartisan (1 Republican) support: The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (http://energyinnovationact.org/ http://energyinnovationact.org/). With this plan, all the revenue from a carbon tax* is directly returned to citizens as a yearly check--no enlargement of the state. This is the organization cofounded by NASA scientist James Hansen, who first testified to Congress about the perils of climate change over 30 years ago. 2) If you're a millennial/gen Z, and you're more skeptical of a market-based solution, the Green New Deal and Sunrise Movement are making waves. Rather than a concrete policy in Congress, they have a set of principles/values that they are pushing forward. This includes economic and social justice issues. *Carbon pricing (which can come in the form of a tax or cap and trade) is the single most effective mechanism to address climate change. The idea is to internalize the _real_ costs of climate change into the price we actually pay--ramping up the price on carbon over time until it is prohibitively expensive to use fossil-fuel-expensive products, and incentivizing the economy to adapt. That fundamental price signal, where renewable energy becomes cheaper relative to fossil fuels (and similarly less fossil fuel-intensive goods are cheaper relative to fossil-fuel-expensive ones) reverberates throughout the economy. However, it's worth noting that while this solution should theoretically appeal to Republicans, almost none have stepped forward...
- sampo 7y ago> Green New Deal Aren't they strongly anti-nuclear? Putting science behind ideology is not a very good position to take about climate change.
- ridicter 7y agoI think their position is: 1) don't shut don't existing nuclear plants to replace them with fossil fuels and 2) wind and solar should make up the new energy mix. But for what it's worth, the membership has diverse views. I'm pro-nuclear. CCL tends to be more pragmatic and have many more nuclear proponents.
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- danschumann 7y agoCan't we make solar powered ice makers on a huge scale and just re freeze it?
- maxxxxx 7y agoYou understand that a refrigerator puts out heat so in the end it’s a zero sum game?
- cookingrobot 7y agoNot exactly a zero-sum game because the earth isn’t a closed system. We’re constantly getting heat energy from the sun and radiating it back out into space at an equal rate. The composition of the atmosphere (greenhouse gasses) decides what equilibrium temperature will be. So if we had big refrigerators refreezing the arctic (without creating greenhouse gasses), they would put a ton of heat into the air but it would radiate away into space just like any other heat captured by the sun, and wouldn’t really affect the earth’s average temperature.
- maxxxxx 7y agoBy that thinking you could just cool down the air. No need to freeze the arctic.
- danschumann 7y agofreezing is white and reflects more
- keenmaster 7y agoThermal energy storage might be able to capture the waste heat. That’s assuming we can make such a massive amount of ice to begin with.
- maxxxxx 7y agoI think the scale of the effort would be way too big. Same probably for carbon sequestration. It’s just too much.
- ThomPete 7y agoThis is speculation not actual scientifically demonstrated furthermore it's speculation based on the most catastrophic predictions. On top of that, sea-level rise is not some even distribution around the globe, some places will get more others will get less. It's a very local phenomenon. This is so misleading yet this level of inaccurate reporting is the basis for the current political debate. Meta studies are to often used as political tools NOT science. I 10 years when the climate catastrophism hopefully have subdued we will se a host of lawsuits against the words offenders of this scaremongering and "cry wolf" Yes the climate is changing yes it's getting slightly hotter. No there isn't any scientifically demonstrated consequences of climate change we don't know how to deal with.
- kisamoto 7y agoNot to hijack this thread but does anybody know of a list of companies/start-ups who are trying to combat climate change/protecting the environment especially if they are hiring? With a brother who has a master's specialising in glacier reduction (and a keen interest in data science) he is finding it a demoralising experience looking for companies who actually seem to be taking action.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoAnyone have any idea what a 1m and 2m rise in sea level looks like in terms of impact to land that is currently dry but will eventually end up underwater?
- coldpie 7y agoDo a web search for "sea rise impact map".
- dexen 7y agoI wholeheartedly recommend the 2006 An Inconvenient Truth [1] as it shows nice animations of expected flooding of, for example, the Manhattan. [1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth)